[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Syria and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Syria Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to syria@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.]

When politics is determined by gunsAfter providing an overview of developments at the various Syrian borders Vijay Prashad writes: “When politics is determined by guns, the civil rebellion — howsoever intense — is no longer significant. It will have no role at Geneva. Neither will the Syrian refugees who are frozen in the hillside town of Arsal and in the Jordanian desert camp of Za’atari.”

Can the Arab revolutions survive Syria and Egypt? Hamid Dabashi says that “the choice has never been between the carnage we witness in Syria and the corrupt elite and the deep states that rule from Morocco to Turkey, from Afghanistan through Iran to Saudi Arabia. The choice is between the will of the people and their revolutionary uprisings and the conspiracy of counterrevolutionary forces to put an end to these aspirations.”

Iraq-Syria Adam Shatz argues that “the Iraq war is not over; it never really ended. It just spilled into a new war, the war in Syria.”

Lebanon Developments

The Future of LebanonIn this pertinent piece, Karim Makdisi suggests that “the assassination of Mohamad Chatah, tragic as it is, has thus created an opportunity for Saudi Arabia and March 14 to ratchet up the sectarian rhetoric, isolate Hizbullah further from national institutions, and provoke it into expending its energies and political capital inside Lebanon thus potentially weakening its resolve and capability in Syria,” but also warns that “this does not at all suggest that the Saudis or Israelis are behind Chatah’s assassination in some cynical attempt to trigger a war; nor that Hizbullah, the Syrian regime, or Iran cannot possibly have been behind it[…] But there can be little doubt that Chatah’s murder is more than a local settling of scores, or some absurd form of revenge against a series of tweets.”

IamNOTamartyr - أنامششهيد A Facebook page that emerged after the bomb that killed seven people including Mohammed Shatah. The page’s about section reads: “We refuse to become martyrs. We refuse to remain victims. We refuse to die a collateral death.”

Observatory in the crosshairs for its coverage Marlin Dick reports on how “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, one of the leading sources of information about the war in Syria, has received death threats over its work from members of the opposition” because of conflicting narratives over the perpetrator of killings across Syria.

WikiLeaks Party team meets Bashar al-Assad“Speaking on Syrian television, Mr Shipton [Julian Assange’s father] announced plans to establish a WikiLeaks Party office in Damascus, saying he wanted "to show the solidarity of the Australian people and Wikileaks Party with the difficulties that Syria is having at the moment".

Syrian Kurds agree to disagree Wladimir Van Wilgenburg explains how, “despite agreeing to speak with a single Kurdish voice at Geneva II, Syria's Kurds are far from united on how to administer the Kurdish areas in the future.”

Syrian rebels get arms and advice through secret command centre in Amman Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh report that “rebel fighters and opposition members say the command centre, based in an intelligence headquarters building in Amman, channels vehicles, sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, small arms and ammunition to Free Syrian Army units – although it has stopped short of giving them much coveted anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.”

Aid to Syrian rebels flows through a complex mazePhil Sands adds that “another key source of weapons are those seized by rebel brigades from regime bases they overrun, with factions sharing out the spoils. Rebel groups sometimes sell these weapons to each other, or trade weapons they may not want or be able to use, such as artillery pieces, for those they more urgently need, such as small arms ammunition.”

Obama’s Failed Islamist Outreach Josh Rogin explains why “the Obama administration’s outreach to the Islamic Front in Syria earlier this month failed due to a flawed plan and unrealistic goals, insiders say—and now American influence on the ground with the armed Syrian opposition is at a new low.”

Who's who: Yahia Abdulbari “Souad Khibieh writes for The Syrian Observer on the doctor who became a landmark in Damascus Countryside”

I want my husband’s corpse! Hanadi Zarf on “a sentence that you frequently hear today in Syria, though in different phrasings, from many women who have lost their men in battle, without knowing where they were finally buried.”

Radicals are Assad’s best friendsMohammed Habash, a religious scholar and former member of the Syrian parliament explains the relationship between the radicals and the Syrian regime and traces it back to the war in Iraq.

Answering Karl reMarks: The Case Against Anti-Interventionism Maysaloon writes: “Karl reMarks has written an essay describing the Arab uprising as a missed opportunity for self determination. I agree with him that there is a serious lack of historical context and political understanding when it comes to analysing and understanding the Arab spring, but I think his conclusions are, on the one hand, premature when it comes to judging some aspects of this spring a failure, and on the other, inaccurate when we come to the question of interventionism and the role played by outside countries in these national struggles.”

My Grandmother, My Country A very personal account by Lina Sergie Attar who writes: “My grandmother died on Tuesday, Dec. 17, thousands of miles away from her home. Our ultimate dreams of return to Syria were slashed with her death. There will forever be an absence in the apartment in the Sabil neighborhood where my father was born and an absence in the cemetery where my grandfather is buried. There will forever be an inconsolable loss in our family that marks us as Syrians. For there is no family without loss in this terrible war.”

ISIS takes on Kafranbel, the voice of the uprising Marlin Dick reports on developments in Kafranbel, where “militants from the Al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) have stormed several media facilities in the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, one of the best-known symbols of Syria’s anti-government uprising, activists said.”

Five Die From Hunger in Yarmouk Camp “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced on Friday that five people have died from hunger in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.”

Stop Starvation in Syria | End the Blockades “We are starting the first phase of a “rolling” solidarity hunger strike onFriday, December 20, where someone will do a hunger strike every day in support of the hunger strikers in Syria through the rest of December”

Skyrocket Light Project “This project includes two parts: (1) installing solar-powered LED lights in critical areas in the camp, which include 42 Child-Friendly Spaces (CFS), three community centers for trauma victims, as well as a children’s library, and (2) providing school supplies to Syrian refugee children living in the surrounding communities, particularly in Mafraq and Amman where they often have few if any opportunities to go to school.”

Photoblog: Embroidery Workshop Helps Refugee Women“Located down a narrow alleyway in the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut, is a workshop where women are busy making pillow covers, tablecloths, scarves, caps, wallets, baby clothes and other needlework products.”

Halqi Claims Syria's Debts Less than Half a Billion DollarsSyrian Observer translates this piece from a Syrian economic magazine that says “the Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi has claimed that Syria’s debts do not exceed half a billion dollars and assured that Syria’s debt is decreasing through timely payments. The statement contradicts national economic figures.”

Syrian War Boosts Demand for Lebanese TobaccoMouhamad Wehbe writes: “Lebanon’s tobacco regulatory authority has allocated around $39 million to increase its production of Lebanese cigarettes. Prompted by an increase in demand, both locally and in Syria, the ultimate goal of the investment is to increase production capacity in Lebanon to 50,000 crates per month, around 60 percent of current local consumption.”

UNHCR reports: Syrian refugees face the dangers of no longer having any citizenship.

«المعارضةترتبأوراقهاقبل «جنيفالسوريMohammad Balloot on the arrangements between the different factions of the opposition (mainly the Syrian National Coalition and the Syrian National Coordination Body) before Geneva 2.

Ibrahim Hamidi reports that ISIS has advanced into the Syrian city of Kafranbel and raided its media center, imprisoned a number of activists and media personnel. ISIS also took over the “dignity bus” which takes care of internally displaced children, supervising their education and providing them with psychological assistance.

Al-Quds reports, after the production of a Saudi film entitled “al-Jahsh”, in which Al-Assad and the Syrian government is insulted, the Syrian regime has responded by closing its border to cars with Saudi license plates.